The "Alliance Defending Freedom", a Christian legal advocacy group has filed a lawsuit against the Grand Canyon National Park administrators and the US Department of the Interior on behalf of Andrew Snelling - "Associate Professor of Geology" at that well known bastion of idiocy, the Institute for Creation Research.

Snelling claims that the National Park would not grant him a permit to collect 50 to 60 fist-sized rocks. All research in the national park is restricted, especially if it requires removing material.

In an email to Snelling filed as part of the lawsuit, a park officer said the project was not granted because the type of rock he wanted to study can also be found outside of the Grand Canyon. The park solicited peer reviews from three mainstream geologists. One mentioned the rocks could be found elsewhere; all three overwhelmingly denounced the work as not scientifically valid, a criterion the park also uses to evaluate proposals. Snelling, who holds a Ph.D. in geology, did not disclose his Answers in Genesis affiliation, nor did he explicitly say he wanted to prove the Grand Canyon is young in his initial permit application, but the reviewers became aware of his reputation.

The Grand Canyon obviously should never have offended people with its geological evidence of deep time.

I'm speculating here but perhaps Snelling also desperately wants to try and unearth evidence - so far missing I believe (which is strange since the Grand Canyon was formed by Noah's Flood and dinosaurs were around both 'before' and 'after' Noah's Flood) - of dinosaur fossils at the Grand Canyon. (Which many scientists believe was formed less than 66 million years ago, though the issue is far from entirely settled.)

Talking of dinosaurs, this BBC programme was on this week:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39922998(the YECs will probably complain that it was 'biased' because it was co-presented by Professor Alice Roberts - who is Patron of the British Humanist Association)

No dinosaurs fossils have been found above the KT/CPg boundary. When faced with this reality, Answers in Genesis have come out with garbage like the following:"So how do creation scientists explain the disappearance of dinosaurs from the fossil record above the Cretaceous layer? Global Flood geology explains the fossil layers in the geologic column. Many dinosaur footprints and body fossils are found in and below the Cretaceous layer. As the Flood waters rose, animals would have naturally sought higher ground. Footprints, often in patterns typical of uphill climbing, memorialize many animals’ final efforts to flee the rising waters. Ultimately, even the larger dinosaurs were overwhelmed and buried.Rock layers above the Cretaceous are consistent with findings expected in the waning half of the Flood year and the post-Flood time. Fossils there include mammals and birds as well as reptiles and amphibians. These mobile animals would have been the last ones overwhelmed and buried."https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/ ... xtinction/

Funny how lumbering crocodilians were apparently MORE nimble when climbing uphill over still dry land than even all those hopping bird-like dinosaur species...

And there's yet more, more recent, AiG utter garbage here:

"Does the K-T boundary even represent the mass extinction of dinosaurs? No. The geologic column is not a record of the evolution of life. The millions of years assigned to it are based on unverifiable assumptions with the ultimate goal of providing sufficient time for evolution to happen. But even infinite time cannot supply the genetic information for life to evolve through natural processes.Much of the fossil record instead is a relative timeline of the order in which organisms were catastrophically buried during the year of Noah’s Flood. The dinosaurs and many other animals seem to disappear above the K-T boundary because the Flood and its aftermath dumped additional sediment on top of those fossilized dinosaur bearing layers after the places they lived were overwhelmed and buried.Does that mean they became extinct after the Flood? No."https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/ ... -asteroid/

So why are there fossils of crocodilians and mammals above the KT/CPg boundary if the layers above were just 'additional sediment'? Why would a 'recent' catastrophic worldwide flood not leave more jumbled fossil layers with at least some dinosaurs (if they really were alive when the flood hit) in the topmost layers? And if the flood is the explanation (it is not an extinction event just a mass die-off based on scripture) why on earth have no dinosaur fossils (animals that died after the flood) been found in those topmost geological layers (all layers that are more recent than the Cretaceous) that AiG dismiss as 'additional sediment' dumped during the 'flood year'?

The lawsuit is mentioned in this video which generally pulls apart the "Ark" attraction and points out that the lawsuit might be an attempt to distract from the awful visitor numbers attending Ken Sham's mythological theme park.https://youtu.be/zrTqKomFM4Q

Though just this week I saw a Ham facebook post claiming great success for the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum. Here it is:https://www.facebook.com/aigkenham"Thousands of people pour into the Ark Encounter (and Creation Museum) daily with great economic impact in Grant and Boone Counties, in Northern Kentucky." (Though the accompanying photos show buildings and no people.)So that's official then. After all, when Ham posts on his facebook page or makes a tweet he is posting facts.